I have a quick question about climbing a route indoors. I recently went to a new gym with my cousin to do a little climbing. During his class, an instructor told him that when you climb a route, you're suppose to use all of the holds that are on that route. I was wondering if this is true?

At the gym I where I learned about climbing, I was never told that was the case. I assume that when you climb a specific route, you use the holds that make it the most efficient way to climb the route, because some of the holds seem to be put there in case someone does not have the same reach.

If someone could clear this up for me it would be helpful, because if I've been climbing routes a wrong way, I want to fix it.

No. The instructor was trying to say some there is some inherent movement in the way the route is set that you miss if you skip holds. If that as true, people would use all the holds possible on a rock route, instead people skip holds whenever possible. The instructor is an idiot.

Yeah, just get up the damn wall (using only taped holds) and dont worry about touching each hold. The routesetter should be creating movement that can force movements for a majority of people. The extremely tall people will climb different from the short people, but that is how it's done outside.

I have a quick question about climbing a route indoors. I recently went to a new gym with my cousin to do a little climbing. During his class, an instructor told him that when you climb a route, you're suppose to use all of the holds that are on that route. I was wondering if this is true?

At the gym I where I learned about climbing, I was never told that was the case. I assume that when you climb a specific route, you use the holds that make it the most efficient way to climb the route, because some of the holds seem to be put there in case someone does not have the same reach.

If someone could clear this up for me it would be helpful, because if I've been climbing routes a wrong way, I want to fix it.

maybe the instructor sets his routes that way. Regardless, gym climbing is contrived by nature. I have traverse problem where not only do I have to use each hold, but I have to use them in sequence. It's a person traverse. Gives me about 75 meters of overhanging traverse.

While I've avoided gyms, I have seen some gyms where the boulders had to use every hold in a certain order too. Hold were number 1 to 10 or so.

I have a quick question about climbing a route indoors. I recently went to a new gym with my cousin to do a little climbing. During his class, an instructor told him that when you climb a route, you're suppose to use all of the holds that are on that route. I was wondering if this is true?

At the gym I where I learned about climbing, I was never told that was the case. I assume that when you climb a specific route, you use the holds that make it the most efficient way to climb the route, because some of the holds seem to be put there in case someone does not have the same reach.

If someone could clear this up for me it would be helpful, because if I've been climbing routes a wrong way, I want to fix it.

You are putting too much thought into this.

In general, if you climbed a route using only the holds that were marked for the route, you climbed the route, regardless of whether you touched every hold, or skipped 3-- unless there are different grades assigned to different variations, and you want to be able to claim that you did a specific variation.

Remember, that gym climbing is by nature contrived, and meant for training. So there is absolutely nothing wrong with setting up specific rules for specific routes to force a specific move. People often do it in small gyms, as a way to expand the number of possible routes.

Sure, you can do that route by skipping 3 holds, or by matching on every hold, or however you might want to do it. But if you want to work on cross-overs, for example, then you might try to do the route and follow the arbitrary rule that the route-setter wrote on the description, such as:"challenge -- no hand matching." In a sense, that creates two different routes following the same line of holds.

Or, sure, you can do that route by touching every single hold. But a route-setter decided to make it a no-hands route. Feet go on holds, and hands only smear. It will be an easy route if you use the holds for both hands and feet, or a more difficult route if you stick to the arbitrary rule posted by a setter, and there might be two different grades posted for this route, something like "5.8 if you use all holds, 5.10 if you do hand-smears-only."

How you decide to do it is entirely up to you. Maybe you will start by climbing it with touching every hold first, and then decide to challenge yourself, and gradually go from touching every hold to touching only two, and then to hand-smears-only. Maybe you will initially climb the route by matching every hold, and then progress to matching only a couple times, and then do a crossover on every single move. Or maybe you decide that you don't want to follow any rules, you just want to climb however you want to climb, and that's it.

The only time you have to follow the rules exactly as they are set, regardless of what you think of those rules, is in a competition. Otherwise, no one but you will care.

I have a quick question about climbing a route indoors. I recently went to a new gym with my cousin to do a little climbing. During his class, an instructor told him that when you climb a route, you're suppose to use all of the holds that are on that route. I was wondering if this is true?

At the gym I where I learned about climbing, I was never told that was the case. I assume that when you climb a specific route, you use the holds that make it the most efficient way to climb the route, because some of the holds seem to be put there in case someone does not have the same reach.

If someone could clear this up for me it would be helpful, because if I've been climbing routes a wrong way, I want to fix it.

Of course I'm just guessing here, but it sounds like your cousin misunderstood the instructor or you misunderstood your cousin, or the instructor didn't communicate very well. In most gyms, you limit yourself to only the holds that are are on the route, but you don't have to use every single one.

Of course, you can do whatever you want, but to claim an ascent of one specific route, the last sentence above is true.

I think just like anything else you get different opinions with different people. I see stronger climbers on easier routes skip holds all the time and I think to myself they are cheating their workout by doing this. Itís usually the climbers that are stronger than they are skilled or a tall person on a route set by a shorter person. My personal opinion on it is Iím here for my work out and youíre here for yours but Iíll usually mention to the gym rats something about it because I want to see them reach full potential but if they donít listen I really donít care. Some people are just more control freaks.

The point to gym climbing for me is to get stronger and to build my bag of tricks and I do this by working routes as intended to get myself out my comfort zone and work on my weaknesses. We have setters at my gym that set the complete opposite of my climbing style and I bitch every time I get on their routes but really I know I get the most improvement from working on them and getting out of my comfort zone.

All that said, he could just be a shitty route setter that canít force movement and just gets pissed that people arenít doing that supper cool move as he envisioned.